


almost wish you loved me, too.

by cp035



Series: Tumblr Prompts [4]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 14:17:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2655104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cp035/pseuds/cp035
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr Prompt: "Didn't you see what I did?" </p>
<p>Charlie has some pre-proposal anxieties.</p>
            </blockquote>





	almost wish you loved me, too.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreenFish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenFish/gifts).



> Oh boy. I finally wrote "real" angst.

It begins like every other night in their shared lives; her place instead of his; the spare keys her landlord cautioned against having made turning in the lock, the warm air of a Michigan spring (is it ever _really_ a summer so far up north?) breezing into her tiny living room.

 

On her couch; are all the essentials, several swimwear sets, pairs of shorts she has yet to choose between, and bright, simple sundresses; sandals, and her travel case of makeup and toiletries (the third she's bought this year). On the floor, are her press-ready jeans a ruffled tank-top, flats or patent-leather pumps, she's got yet to choose.

 

Her passport is balanced precariously atop a piggy bank on her coffee table, glued together on its axis from the time when she smashed it against the linoleum in the kitchen; last summer, which seemed a good enough time to smash a piggy bank just to see what it properly felt like.

 

It was a deep cut to the center of her palm from a splash of porcelain; his voice sounded worried, and then angry because it was so stupid and she was hurt.

 

She had laughed; droplets of blood staining the white sundress she had worn while he ran for the first aid kit, shaking his head.

 

"Life isn't worth it if you don't get hurt sometimes, right? Charlie, it was _fun_. I was never allowed to do that as a kid.", she told him, as he poured peroxide over a cotton ball.

 

"Yeah; but it's not like you should be looking for trouble, Meryl. Like- not on _purpose_.", he sighed, holding her hand still as he cleaned away the blood.

 

Today, without turning to face him, she asks; "Blue or green?"

 

He doesn't miss a beat and answers; "Green. Your hair really-...looks nice with green."

 

"Thanks."

 

So she throws a bright green bikini into the suitcase on the floor, and nods.

 

"Okay, heels or flats?"

 

"Um...heels, I guess? You're like four-eleven."

 

"I am not! I'm five-foot-three!"

 

"I'm President Obama."

 

"Welcome to my home, Mister President. What brings you here today?", she can't help but laugh, turning to him, standing in her door, and with her shitty depth perception, it's like he's right out of a Hallmark Christmas movie- that old trope of the lost boy at his lover's door, right in the frame; coming to sweep her away after a horribly convoluted ninety minutes of running around after each other into pitfalls of old girlfriends and family secrets.

 

His left hand is deep in his pocket; balled into a fist; and his eyes are dark. She stumbles forward, suddenly concerned.

 

"Charlie-..."

 

Just like in those Hallmark movies, his arm jerks upward, and she can see his fingers closed around a black velvet box, silver script of a jeweler's stamp on the bottom. He holds it out towards her; in cinematic scope; the rubber-band bracelets on his wrist in oversaturated, sharp, color- burned into her mind forever.

 

"Meryl-..."

 

She can't say anything. She won't. But evidently; it's what he wants.

 

"Talk me out of this. _Please._ "

 

* * *

 

 

"C-can I at least see the ring?", she sputters; altogether uncharacteristically.

 

Charlie rakes a hand through his newly-chopped hair; his eyes widening with shock for a fraction of a moment as he realizes his curls are no longer there. His haircut happened yesterday; and Tanith's told him he's gorgeous now.

 

"I love seeing your face; and you look like _Charlie_ again. Not that guy beside Meryl winning the Olympics. Who's that?"

 

" _Me._ ", he had said, very matter-of-factly, and she just giggled. Charlie liked her giggle, because it made him laugh, and he knew that was how you knew she was the girl. _Whoever makes you laugh the loudest_ ; said the little engraved spoon at the University of Michigan gift shop. Now, those were words to live by.

 

"Skater you. Not _my boyfriend_ you.", she corrected. "I'm just happy to see him again, because you look like you're totally in love with Meryl on the cover of like, People and that shit, and it's so weird. Like, Meryl's my best friend, and you're my boyfriend, and it's like, you know; a cable movie where you dump me and realize your undying love for her- and then I end up realizing my undying love for... _Fedor_. Yuck."

 

"Yeah...that would be _weird_.", Charlie forced himself to say; his heart suddenly having picked up some speed while Tanith had spoken.

 

"Yeah, though some days I do think I should run away with Fedor. Especially when you don't put the toilet seat down, you pig!", she teased, and Charlie unclenched inside, if only slightly.

 

Surely, he told himself, as he relaxed, he was the outlier here. A normal person didn't do that- have one thousand possible outcomes and a hundred cringe-worthy responses ready just in case someone's clearly innocent joke about his stupid hair was supposed to be something deeper. He and Tanith didn't do deeper (except in bed).

 

They were open, and honest, and perfect.

 

Deeper was for the _guilty._

 

"Oh my God, but imagine if you were _actually_ in love with Meryl! It'd be so funny."

 

"No...", he tried to laugh. "I mean, yuck...right?"

 

She hadn't giggled, instead succinctly nodded as though they were in a business meeting; and so he hadn't said anything after that.

 

He'd just bought the ring; and filled out the paperwork for the payments, and tapped his card on top of the machine.

 

Nothing more to it than that.

 

"Um...isn't that bad luck?", he scrambles; now, and Meryl squints at him, pausing to consider.

 

"Um.. _no_? I'm a girl, Charlie, it's totally not. I've seen lots of guys' rings. C'mon."

 

She greedily tears the velvet box from his hands and pops it open without a word.

 

The ring is _beautiful_. Not just beautiful, the way that a catalog would describe; but _beautiful_ , in the way Meryl can see its' facets sparkle in Tanith's eyes; can see her match it's thin band with a bright blue skirt.

 

"It's _perfect._ ", she finds herself telling Charlie, but thankfully she holds her tongue before she adds more, like it's the ring she would have wanted; if she were the kind of girl who dreamt about being swept off her feet.

 

(She was.)

 

"I know. I know. That's what the um, that's what I asked for. I didn't know what she would...you know, um, it's not like I could just _ask_ Tanith-" 

 

"No, I know. I like it, I meant I liked it, Charlie. It's really _nice_." 

 

* * *

 

 

Charlie wildly shakes his head, stumbling into her condo, collapsing into her couch; not a moment's notice paid to the expensive blouse wrinkled under his khaki-clad ass.

 

" _No._ It's _not._ God-...it's, Meryl... _she won't like it_. It's not-...I didn't know what she fucking wanted, isn't that a sign that I shouldn't be fucking _about to propose to her?",_ he wails at her Tiffany-blue painted walls, and for a moment, Meryl's stomach clenches. She should feel guilty, but instead; his anguish washes over her in relief.

 

She isn't losing him; like losing her keys in the morning or all good sense when she's in a strange city, drunk out of her mind clutched in Jeremy Abbott's arms in his parked car, slurring directions and begging to know where they are.

 

"We're in Plymouth. _Where you live_.", he'd supplied; after she sobbed into his t-shirt begging him to tell her it wasn't _over,_ and it wouldn't ever be, that she and Charlie wouldn't be a footnote in a book about the history of figure skating in twenty years. She doesn't want to skate with him forever, as Jeremy is made very aware- since she punctuated this point with sharp jabs at his chest; but for someone who believed so much in living the life you'd always imagined, life without Charlie was something she never had.

 

"I think you just need to um...sober up, and calm down a little bit. It's been a crazy, I guess, _year_ , but you know-...we're gonna be in Japan together and um, you're going on vacation and there's lots of time in Hawaii to talk to him, right?", Jeremy suggested, lost on his friend as she slammed a tiny fist against his window and screamed.

 

Tonight; Meryl's still got a _choice._

 

( _She'll let him go. Meryl's always been considerate like that. But she won't just lose him without a fight._ ) 

 

* * *

 

 

"No, no, no. Charlie, c'mon. _That's silly_. Hey, look at me.", she giggles, plopping down beside him on a cushion.

 

She can be calming. Soothing. His voice of reason.

 

He comes here because that's what he _needs_ ; every night that begins and ends like this.

 

It's comfort that brings them together.

 

Familiarity.

 

Security.

 

_Love_ , maybe. But also, maybe not.

 

"Meryl, no-...it's not...- a little thing, okay? I'm losing my shit over this because _I don't..._ ", he pauses to suck in a deep breath, instinctually reaching for her hand; and she takes it without question, the silly, stupid, habit that feels like a dagger through her heart.

 

Someday, these moments won't happen anymore. So, she's got to remember them, the coarse threads of his gray henley, the fading bleached highlights in his hair; his thumb drawing circles on the back of her hand. How he hasn't shaved in a couple of weeks. How her lights are too bright, and she hates that one pair of jeans on the floor.

 

" _I don't want to do it._ ", he tells her, finally, sounding so defeated it aches as he waves a hand towards the box on her living room table.

 

"What-...do you mean _you don't_ \- _Charlie...I don't think you're thinking right now_.", she can barely bring herself to say. It's stupid, so, so, selfish that the sudden glimmer in the center of her chest hinges on him shattering someone else's heart.

 

He throws himself back on the sofa, groaning, exasperated.

 

" _Yes, I fucking am_. I'm thinking I don't know her favorite color. I don't even know how many sugars she puts in her coffee because I don't- I don't wake up early enough to make it for her. I don't know what she- I buy my girlfriend gift cards because I'm fucked up and she still hasn't kicked me out- but...Meryl, I am _not_ ready for this. _I can't_ fucking do something like this."

 

"....then,- then, _why?_ "

 

He grips her by the shoulders; eyes wild as though if he drives himself deep enough to the ground- the solution to everything will spring up fresh as a flower.

 

"I have to." 

 

* * *

 

 

"I have to do right by her and I- _Meryl, I don't want to do this but I don't want to not_. I don't want to- I don't wake up in a year and have Tanith asking me, _Didn't you see what I did?_ and have to tell her I have no idea because I never made an _effort_."

 

"Yes, you did. Charlie, you do everything for-"

 

"It's not _enough_. This- _that fucking ring, that's enough_. Isn't that...-isn't that what every girl wants? For a guy to surprise her, make her have the most special day in her entire life, show her how much he cares for that one perfect moment when she says-"

 

" _-Yes._ "

 

Charlie's hands drop by his sides, and his eyes flutter shut; too tired to argue further, and Meryl's voice, caught in her throat, pitches forward.

 

"Y-yes, _but-_ just because...there are things you _should_ do doesn't mean- _it doesn't mean you have to._ Charlie, please- listen to me; you never have to do anything. You can always... _you always have a choice, don't we_?"

 

He sighs; far too old for his years; and fixes his gaze on her piggy bank.

 

"Maybe...I guess. You do. But you don't...you aren't _responsible_ to someone like I am to Tanith. Because it's different, kind of, from dating someone. Because we- _it's my obligation not to fuck with her anymore._ "

 

" _It was always your obligation not to fuck with me, too._ You know what you're doing. You've had a lot of practice."

 

It isn't her fault; that it comes out colder than it should.

 

"What the fuck does that mean?", Charlie snaps.

 

" _What the fuck does that_ \- it means, you know how to make _choices_ , Charlie. You know how to make _sacrifices_. Don't you dare put this decision on me.", she seethes in sudden anger.

 

He doesn't want her opinion, or even her blessing. He wants her _hand_ in a bad choice; because the two of them feed off each other like the _co-dependent parasites_ they are.

 

"If I tell you to marry her, you'll _blame_ me when it isn't a fairy tale for the rest of your lives. If I tell you this is the dumbest thing you've done this decade, you'll blame _me_ for holding _you_ back."

 

"You know what? _Fuck you_."

 

"As usual, I'll be an active participant in that process since _you can't do shit by yourself_."

 

"Really? _Fine_."

 

" _Fine_." 

 

* * *

 

 

Their stalemate lasts for all of five minutes; and she surprises herself by breaking first.

 

"Sorry. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

 

"Yeah...um, I know. It's okay."

 

Meryl takes a deep breath, and shuts her eyes. It's better not to see his face; when she says "I'm sorry, but I meant it. I can't...tell you what to do, okay? We're _different_...we're separate people and we need to-... _do that._ "

 

" _I know_. I am. But...can I ask you for one thing?"

 

"Y-yeah-"

 

She sees his face now; her mind racing to document every last detail- just in case this is the last time she'll be able to.

 

" _Stick by me?_ We can be...-separate people, but I still want there to be _we._ "

 

"Me too."

 

" _Promise?_ "

 

"Promise. Yeah, I promise."

 

_(She can't do it. How are you supposed to let someone go when you've already lost them?_ )


End file.
